


Wayfaring Stranger

by kadaransmuggler



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Courier Six as the Inquisitor, F/F, Modern Girl in Thedas, Rating May Change, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-07-28 10:30:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16239794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadaransmuggler/pseuds/kadaransmuggler
Summary: "It is not the strangest thing that has ever happened to her. It is not even the strangest thing that has happened to her this week."Or, the transportalponder malfunctions and Courier Six wakes up in a dungeon with a weird green mark on her hand.





	1. arrival

Mariah Walker wakes up in a dungeon. On reflection, it is not the strangest thing that has ever happened to her. It’s not even the strangest thing that has happened to her this week. Hell, just yesterday she’d gone back to the Big Empty to get a replacement hand after two fingers had gotten blown off when she’d decided she was, in fact, skilled enough with dynamite to use it. She was still getting used to the seam on her wrist where her flesh met the new skin.

  
The other hand was what gave her pause. It glowed a sickly green, and then it flared up. God help her, but it hurt loud enough that she couldn’t quite hold back a scream. That alone let her know something was strange- Mariah Walker was more machine than woman at this point, and with all the fuckin’ implants she’d poured her caps into, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot that hurt anymore. Of course, she only noticed it after it stopped hurting. It was a little hard to reflect on things when it felt like her flesh was being peeled away from her bones.

  
She only hoped her things were somewhere safe, and more importantly, somewhere nearby. If she could get her hands on the transportalponder and get back to the Big Empty, she could handle this. The first order of business would be to replace the glowing hand- it admittedly looked cool, but it was likely to make folks twitchy, and it hurt like hell besides. The second order of business would be to none-so-gently remind the Think Tank of their crimes against humanity in an attempt to strong-arm them into telling her why she was glowing and why the transportalponder had dumped her…wait, where had it dumped her?

  
Her musing is cut off when the heavy wooden door is flung open with enough force that it slams into the wall behind it. A woman stalks into the dungeon, and the first thing Mariah notices is that her armor is positively medieval. The second thing she notices is that the woman is carrying a sword, which, admittedly is not that strange either. Plenty of people made do with whatever weapons they could get their hands on, and if that meant swords pillaged from the ruins of Old World museums, well, who was Mariah to judge? It was, however, the first time she’d seen anyone in armor that looked like that.

  
“Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now,” the woman demands, stalking closer. Mariah notices another woman enter the room behind her, wearing…was that a chainmail dress? What kind of mess had she stumbled into now?

  
“Uh, well, because I’d die without finding out why you wanted me dead?” she answers, looking up at the woman. Admittedly, that wasn’t the smoothest thing she’d ever said, but she hadn’t been very eloquent when Benny had her tied up at his feet either. The other one steps closer, staying just out of the light, and Mariah’s pretty sure that’s intentional.

  
“Do you remember what happened?” the other one asks, and it brings Mariah back to her earlier train of thought. She remembers waking up and gearing up, ready to head back into the Mojave to deal with the rest of the bullshit problems people decided she needed to handle. She’d pressed the trigger on the transportalponder and then…she remembered running. There were spiders, and the world was fucking green, which was admirable in itself. She remembers a woman’s hand reaching out to her.

  
“I remember running. And then a woman. I don’t remember how I got there or who the woman was,” she answers, frowning down at the manacles on her wrist. If there was one thing she hated, it was losing time. It’d happened before, when she’d passed out in the bunker and woken up in the Sierra Madre. She twisted her head as the black-haired woman circled around her, noticing that there was no tell-tell pull from a bomb collar. Well. This could definitely be going worse, Mariah would give it that.

  
“You’re lying,” the woman snarls, a hand closing around the back of her neck, and Mariah’s seconds away from showing her that she’s still dangerous when she’s bound. She’d practiced, after Benny. Boone had looked at her strange, but he’d helped. Let her throw him to the ground over and over again until she felt safer.

  
“We need her, Cassandra,” the other woman says, and the warning in her voice is enough to stop Cassandra in her tracks. Mariah feels a letter better, knowing she’s got a name for her.

  
“…You’re right, as always. Go to the forward camp, Leliana. I will take her there,” Cassandra says, and she’s kind enough to haul Mariah to her feet.

 

“Just a moment. I’m not going anywhere until I found out where my shit is. Last thing I remember, I had a big pack on my back full of shit. Where’s it at?” Mariah demands. She wishes her hands were free so she could cross her arms.

  
“I’ll have it waiting outside of town. It would be best to leave her bound until then, as well. The villagers have already decided her guilt,” Leliana says, and Mariah’s pissed, but she can’t exactly find fault in that logic. If she had to pick between staying chained and having her things or getting lynched, well, she’d take the chains.

  
Leliana leaves first. Cassandra takes a moment to let Mariah get her bearings. She holds a waterskin to her lips, letting her drink, and damn but Mariah’s just now realizing how thirsty she is. She feels like she could drink the entire Colorado River, even if the radiation would kill her. Cassandra takes the manacles off, too, leaving the rope that ties her hands together.

  
“All my shit better be there when we get there,” she warns. Cassandra scoffs, rolling her eyes. She keeps one hand on Mariah’s shoulder as she leads her up the stairs and out of the dungeons.

  
“So…mind telling me what’s going on?” Mariah asks. She’d hoped the other woman would be a little chattier- how the hell else was she going to figure out where she was and how she got there otherwise? She took it back. She missed the Sierra Madre, even if she’d woken up with a bomb collar around her neck, because when she’d woken up Elijah had been there to monologue. She wished there was someone here to monologue and conveniently tell her where she was and what the hell had happened. And maybe so she could yell obscenities. That’d helped with Elijah.

  
“It…will be easier to show her,” Cassandra says. Mariah heaves a sigh and falls silent, taking in her surroundings. Some sort of church? Was there even anyone left in the Wasteland who believed in something? She certainly didn’t. She’d seen one too many starving orphans (the kids in Freeside who fell upon the rat she’d shot, eating it raw while she tried not to gag) and too many addicts (the old man in Freeside who looked enough like Eli that it hurt, even though Eli was five years dead and the man was several decades older) and too many people with the worst lot in life for her to think there was a God. Or, at the least, for her to think there was a God that gave a shit. Actually, come to think of it, this church was in remarkable condition. The only place Mariah had ever seen in such pristine shape was New Vegas itself, and House hadn’t hesitated in telling her that it’d come from his own genius.

  
God help her if she’d found another House. She wasn’t strong enough for that. One Pre-War asshole with a grandiosity complex was plenty, thank you very much.

  
Cassandra opens the church’s door, and Mariah’s not sure what she was expecting. She blinks against the blinding light for a moment, eyes watering. She thinks she might have been expecting something familiar- Pre-War ruins turned into homes, shanty towns cobbled together from rubble. But no. What she sees when her eyes finally adjust is a village, full of cute little log cabins, and a glowing green hole in the sky.

  
The hole in the sky pulses and her hand follows suit. Mariah goes to her knees with the pain, but she doesn’t scream this time. Bites her tongue so hard it bleeds, though.

  
“They call it the Breach. Whatever it is, it is of the same magic in your palm. It is growing. And it is killing you,” Cassandra says, turning to her and kneeling in front of her. The pulse fades, leaving Mariah’s eyes watering.

  
“I’m guessing you want me to help with that?” she asks, glancing up from the mark on her hand.

  
“You’re our only hope. Nothing we’ve tried can close it, or any of the smaller rifts that it has spawned,” she answers, voice soft and gentle, almost pleading.

  
“Yeah. Yeah,” Mariah agrees, pushing herself unsteadily to her feet. It’s not the most eloquent response, but Cassandra seems satisfied, a small smile tugging at her features before she turns around and leads her through the village, one hand on the hilt of her sword.

  
“The people here have decided your guilt. They need it. Whatever happened at the Conclave, whatever created the Breach…it killed Most Holy, Divine Justinia. We all grieve her loss,” Cassandra explains. Mariah doesn’t have the energy to ask who Divine Justinia is, what the Conclave was, and, well, she supposes she doesn’t need to ask what the Breach is. Cassandra had probably explained whatever she knew about it already.

  
The crowd of villagers seems displeased when she walks through it, but none of them make a move to attack. Mariah follows Cassandra through a set of heavy doors onto a stone bridge, where Cassandra stops her to cut the rope away from her hands. Just beside the door, Mariah catches sight of her pack. She lets out a pleased little “aha!” before diving forward, scooping it up and yanking it open.

  
Everything is in there, save for the hunting rifle that wouldn’t fit, and that’s propped up on the wall next to it. Mariah slings her rifle over her back, slings the pack on on top of it, and slides her pistols into the holsters on her hips (one of them she’d taken from Benny, and damn if it hadn’t been satisfying to kill him with the gun he’d used to put her in the ground. The other had been given to her in Zion by Joshua. It had some stupid name, she was sure, something Biblical that would make Mariah cringe if she said it out loud).

  
With her guns at her belt and her pack on her back, Mariah feels ready to take on the world. She’ll settle for the Breach, though.


	2. ain't that a kick in the head

They reached the first rift without too much fanfare. Except for that moment when Mariah had fired her first shot, killing whatever monstrosity had been trying to attack her. She was a good shot, too, getting it right in what she assumed was the head. It’d died quick and easy, and she’d have gotten the other one too, but Cassandra was standing in between them, hacking at it with her sword. It had died soon enough, and then Cassandra had turned on her, the pointy end of the sword pointed directly at her chest, and, well, Mariah had never been the sort of woman to appreciate the business end of a weapon pointed at her.

“Watch where you point that,” she’d said, voice cold as she slid her pistol back into the holster.

“What was that?” the other woman had ground out, sword still pointed directly at Mariah’s chest.  
  
“Jesus Christ, are you people so medieval that you don’t have guns?” she had asked, one hand on her hip as she cocked her head at her.

“We…do not have these guns. But I must insist you hand yours over, along with any other weapons you are carrying,” she had said, sword wavering just a little, and damn but Mariah really hadn’t liked that.

“I’m sorry, you want me to hand over my weapons? Number one, the first rule of gun safety is never to hand a gun to someone that doesn’t know how to use it. Number two, I was attacked by whatever the fuck that was. Are you seriously going to try and make me do the rest of this unarmed?” she’d demanded. And, well, it was a hell of a lot more polite than what she usually would have done. Usually, she would have offered to relinquish a single bullet wherever the offending party wanted it.

“I should remember that you agreed to come willingly,” Cassandra assented, sheathing her sword after a moment.

“You’re damn right you should,” Mariah muttered, pushing past Cassandra to lead the way through the valley. It seemed like a straight shot. After that, they hadn’t had any more problems until they got to the first rift.

It had pulsed, when they- or more specifically, when Mariah- had gotten close. She let out a stifled scream, which in turn drew the attention of the demons (Cassandra had solemnly informed her that that’s what they were, and they didn’t exactly match the Biblical descriptions of demons that Mariah had heard about from Joshua or Daniel, but then, Mariah hadn’t exactly paid much attention to the Biblical bullshit in the first place). She swears, fumbling for her pistol. The pain makes her clumsy, and her first shot goes wide, sailing over the demon’s shoulder.

Her second shot, accompanied by more swearing, gets the job done. The demon falls, and with it, the battlefield falls silent. Cassandra and the others must have taken care of the rest of the demons while Mariah was focused on the first.

“Quickly! Before more come through!” one of them calls out, reaching out and grabbing Mariah’s wrist, yanking her forward and holding her palm towards the rift. There is a half-second where nothing happens, and then a glowing green thread connects them, and she bites her lip so hard it bleeds.

Mariah had thought she knew pain. She’d been shot too many times to think otherwise, but this is a different thing altogether. When the rift folds in on itself, severing the connection, she staggers forward a few seconds. The grip on her wrist is all that keeps her standing.

“And here I thought we’d be ass-deep in demons forever,” the other stranger says, and Mariah turns in time to see him putting his crossbow on his back. She hadn’t actually ever seen a crossbow, but she’d read about them in some Pre-War books. She notices moments later that he’s incredibly short.

“My name is Solas, if there are to be introductions,” the first stranger says, and Mariah turns her attention back to him. The first thing she notices is the baldness. The second thing she notices is the ears and that they’re pointed. Well. That wasn’t normal. Not that Mariah had much to say on what was normal and what wasn’t, what with the whole “half machine” thing she had going on.

“I’m Mariah. Nice to meet you, Solas. Who’s your friend here?” she asks, nodding at the short one. Solas snorts- okay, well, probably not friends then.

“Varric Tethras, at your service. Rogue, storyteller, and occasionally, unwelcome tag-a-long,” the short one says, sending a wink in Cassandra’s direction. Her companion lets out a grunt that brings a faint smile to her face.

“Well, Solas, Varric. It’s good to meet you,” she says, grinning at them. She notices Varric eyeing the gun, but he doesn’t say anything, and she can’t say she minds. If all these people had were medieval weapons, Mariah didn’t know how in the hell she was going to manage to explain pistols to them. Or the grenades that she had in the bottom of her pack, but, well, hopefully, she could seal this Breach and go home before she had to use them.

“I’m pleased to see you still live,” Solas says, a gracious smile on his lips.

“He means that he kept that mark from killing you while you slept,” Varric interjects, winking again. Mariah decides then that she likes the self-proclaimed rogue. He had a kind of humor that the Wasteland stomped out of most people. It was nice to see.

“So, I guess you know more about this thing than the average person. Tell me about while we move?” she asks, the small smile still on her face. Cassandra takes that as a cue to turn and lead the way down a snowy hill, Varric following just behind. Solas motions for Mariah to walk with him, and she finds herself falling into step beside him.

He gives her a brief rundown of the situation. There are a lot of terms that don’t make sense to her- she’s not quite clear on what the Fade is and the mention of magic throws her for a loop, but Mariah’s always been good at rolling with the punches, so she nods along and pretends she knows what these things are.

They run into more demons. Mariah’s a better shot this time without the anchor flaring and distracting her. She takes out three demons in the time it takes Solas to freeze a fourth solid for Cassandra to shatter.

“I’m not sure what that is, but you’re a hell of a shot with it,” Varric mentions, as they climb yet another set of stairs. It was starting to make her contemplate getting her knees replaced as well- the cold was making old wounds act up again.

“If I wasn’t so good with it, I’d be dead,” she says, with a small shrug of her shoulders. And if it weren’t for Eli, some six years ago, teaching her how to shoot with his hands on her waist and a chin on a shoulder, well, she’d have joined him in whatever afterlife there was by now. Not that she’d necessarily mind that. Sometimes she thinks Benny would’ve done her a mercy if he’d put her in the ground for good.

“Such is the way of things,” Cassandra says up ahead, a small smile on her face as she glances over her shoulder at her. Mariah’s quick to return the smile.

* * *

They reach the forward camp, and any smile is wiped off of Mariah’s face. They’d closed another rift, which hadn’t hurt any less, and she’d walked across the bridge to the redhead from before only to find him arguing with a man in what was, quite frankly, a ridiculous outfit.

She didn’t deal well with the accusations the man- Roderick, she found- hurled at her. She didn’t deal well with the way he blames Cassandra, either, and her fingers itch to wrap around the handle of her pistol. It’d be satisfying to slam it into his face.

In the end, she bumps him with her shoulder when she brushes past, trailing after Cassandra as they go to join the main force of the soldiers.

* * *

They told her the temple was ruined. In a way, she only blames herself for underestimating the level of devastation. It makes her think of the Divide, of the twisted metal skeletons left of buildings and rubble strewn thick over the ground. It makes her think of the Courier’s Mile. All of it wrought by her hand, and here was another place ruined and she had to wonder if she’d caused this, too.

Mariah was tired of killing things.

She didn’t linger long enough for her companions to suspect anything. She stops for a moment in front of the burning husk of a body, frozen in place, mouth still opened in a scream, before she moves on again. She can’t help but wonder if Eli had died screaming. Would she have been able to tell by his skeleton alone?

Leliana has just raced up to meet them, bright eyes looking out of place in the middle of the desolate rubble, when it happens.

“Now is the hour of our victory. Bring forth the sacrifice,” a voice says, and Mariah can feel something in the back of her head that tells her she knows this voice.

“What are we hearing?” Cassandra demands, something frantic and scared in her voice and Mariah’s got to sympathize. It is kind of spooky, to hear a disembodied voice in the middle of ground zero.

“At a guess? The person who created the Breach. The Fade bleeds into this place,” Solas says, voice grim. Mariah looks up at the Breach above them and squares her shoulders.

“Let’s just go close it,” she says, pushing past them to lead the way through the twisting path in the rubble. She comes up short when she rounds a corner to see spikes of glowing red…something sticking up from the ground. She steps closer, and the Geiger counter on her Pip-Boy starts to chirp.

“Don’t touch it. It’s red lyrium,” Varric says, voice shaky.

“And radioactive,” Mariah says, helpfully. She steps around it and keeps going until she finds a set of stairs leading down to the rift below the Breach.

* * *

Her bullets bounce off the fucking pride demon. She tries both pistols, even ducks behind a large piece of the rubble to yank her rifle off her back, and none of it does nothing. She can’t even scream without drawing the damn thing’s attention, and it’d claw through her leather armor like butter.

With nothing else to do, she throws her hand up at the rift, desperate. That same glowing green magic connects the mark on her hand to the rift up above. It still hurts, more than the dynamite ever did, but it also brings the pride demon to its knees.

“Everybody back!” she yells. Miraculously, they listen. She draws her arm back to throw, pulling the pin from the grenade at the last second, and lets it fly.

The explosion shakes the ground beneath her feet, but the demon doesn’t get back up. The rift above her shifts, the crystalline spikes retreating, and Mariah turns her back on the demon and thrusts her hand up again.

The pain is worse this time, crawling up her arm. She can feel it in her jaw, and God help her, but nothing has ever hurt this bad and she just wants it to stop.

It is a mercy when she crumples, darkness overtaking her.

* * *

_She wakes up in bed, sunlight streaming through the windows. She yawns, stretching, and the sheets shift down to pool around her waist, leaving her chest bare. She settles back against the mattress, blinking her eyes open to stare at the ceiling fan that hasn’t worked in two hundred years._

_Eli shifts on the mattress next to her, and Mariah rolls onto her side to face him. He lets out a groan, blinking open to stare at her with those same brown eyes that always melted her heart. She never told him, but his eyes were the reason she’d walked up to him at the bar, two spiked sarsaparillas in her hand._

_“Morning, sleepyhead,” she purrs, sitting up and throwing one leg over his waist so she’s straddling him. She runs her hands up his bare chest. He groans again, his hands coming up to rest on her shoulders and pull her down into a kiss._

_“If you’re gonna wake up me up like this, you can do it more often,” he says when they pull apart, voice husky from sleep, and Mariah laughs, leaning down to kiss him again before rolling onto the bed next to him. He sits up, plucking a cigarette and the golden lighter she’d taken from the body of one of the Khans who’d buried her from the bedside table._

_“How’s the baby doing?” he asks, glancing down at her stomach. She hasn’t bothered to pull the blankets up, but her stomach’s still flat, hadn’t yet started to round out._

_“Dunno. Ain’t no doctors around here,” she answers, plucking the cigarette from between his lips and putting it between her own._

_“Was thinking about names,” he says, reaching over to the table for another cigarette. She pouted a little- she kind of liked it when they passed one back and forth._

_“Oh?” she asks, flicking ashes into the carpet._

_“Was thinking Naomi for a girl,” he says, and it brings a smile to Mariah’s face, even when something in the back of her mind is screaming at the wrong of it all._

_“Funny. That’s what I was thinking,” she said. She reaches over him, snuffing out the cigarette on the bedside table before she crawls on top of him again, pressing a slow and soft kiss to his lips. She liked it when she woke up with Eli in her bed_ , _when she was all molasses-slow and relaxed. She liked being able to melt into him, wasting away the day in bed (if she were being honest with herself, she only liked doing it with him)._

_“How’d that delivery go?” he asks, lips hovering just a hair’s breadth away from hers, and that’s when she knows that something’s wrong. She pulls back, staring down at him._

_“I…only ever made one delivery out of the Divide,” she says, the rest of what she might have said caught like a butterfly in the cage of her ribs. “This isn’t real,” she breathes, instead of anything else that she might have said. She remembers, now. Remembers walking up to the gates of the Divide, an NCR officer stopping her as she breathed in the air and held it in her lungs like an apology. Remembers naming her baby Naomi and telling her about the daddy she'd never know before she'd woke up one night with a cramp in her stomach and too much blood for everything to be okay. Remembers kneeling on the ground in front of a man in a checkered suit before he puts two bullets in her head, and remembers waking up in Goodsprings because Doc Mitchell had put her back together. Remembers that she'd woken up in a dungeon with a mark on her hand._

_“But it would’ve been nice to pretend,” he murmurs, sitting up, and Mariah lets her eyes shut when he presses his lips to hers. She doesn’t open them again until it fades away, and when she does, she’s standing in the middle of a forest. There are two rings carved from seashells on the ground at her feet, and her heart breaks all over again at the sight._

_She doesn’t notice the wolf lurking in the bushes behind her._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi my name's nik i made myself sad with my own ocs 
> 
> thanks for reading! comments and kudos are always very much welcome.


	3. in the shadow of the valley

Leliana strides into the Chantry. She’d just spent the last hour going through the Herald’s belongings once more. Wisely, she had left the so-called guns alone, unsure how to operate them and unwilling to take the chance of harming herself. Besides, she’d been in the Herald’s cabin as she’d done it, and she was sure that firing one of the weapons would have roused her.

She’d tried to go through the box that the Herald wore on her wrist, but she hadn’t been able to understand how to work it, and so she’d left it laying on the table as she carefully packed everything else up, more or less the same way it had been when she found it. And now she walks into the Chantry, striding down the long hallway. She is, of course, late to the meeting, frustrated by her lack of understanding. The box the Herald wore was by far the most intriguing, and she’d managed to do something whenever she turned the dials, but the letters on the thing’s screen had been impossible to understand. She had, of course, spent far longer than necessary trying to understand.

Not that they could start without her. The whole reason the meeting had been called was so they could discuss anything Leliana discovered about the Herald’s belongings. As it is, she passes Roderick on the way to the meeting, who stormed past from the direction of the makeshift war room. At least she had missed whatever his most recent tirade was.

“You’re late,” Cullen says, by way of greeting. She can tell he’s faintly amused- the spymaster, who usually arrives long before everyone else so she can watch them file into the room, is late.

“Did you find anything?” Josephine asks, anxiously chewing on the end of her pen. Mariah Walker was a complete unknown- the woman could handle herself in combat, spoke with a strange accent that was slightly reminiscent of the dwarves of Orzammar despite clearly not being a dwarf, and didn’t seem to have a clue about Andraste or the Maker, much less the Conclave or anything leading up to it.

“No,” Leliana sighs. It rankles, to admit her defeat. She was used to knowing things, and the not-knowing was both frustrating and daunting.

“Why not?” Cullen asks. His tone is not accusatory or demanding, simply curious, but it stings all the same.

“The Herald’s devices are…strange. I didn’t want to risk using any of the weapons, lest I injure myself or someone else, or she wake and catch me. I also couldn’t figure out the device she wears on her wrist- the letters that appeared were not in any language I’m familiar in,” she explains, voice clipped and professional.

“Did her pack contain anything else? Personal belongings, perhaps?” Josephine asks, tapping the end of her pen against her teeth, brow furrowed as she tries to think.

“Nothing that seemed too personal. It seemed she carried spare armor and clothes, both things of unfamiliar material and craftsmanship. There were also bottles- I’m unsure if it was some sort of alcohol or not. There were also some rations, also unfamiliar. Nothing she has is like anything we’ve seen before,” Leliana answers, frustration leaking into her voice.

Before anyone can respond, the door to the war room opens, and Cassandra hurries inside. The Seeker also looks vaguely frustrated, although Leliana assumes it is for far different reasons.

“I apologize for being late. It seems like every three steps someone stopped me with a problem they wanted me to solve,” she huffs. A faint smile graces Leliana’s face.

“No worries. We were just discussing how I haven’t managed to find anything,” the spymaster replies, leaning on the war table. Josephine had put it together. Or, at least, Josephine had acquired the map spread across the table.

“That is…unfortunate,” Cassandra says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“If we’ve got that out of the way, why don’t we move onto what you and Leliana heard at the temple?” Cullen asks. Leliana had said earlier that if she could glean some clues from the Herald’s belongings, she could probably piece something together.

“Most Holy called out to her. There was another voice, one we didn’t recognize. I believe the owner of that voice was responsible for the explosion at the Conclave- it called Most Holy a sacrifice,” Cassandra begins. There was little doubt in the Seeker’s mind that Mariah was innocent. While she knew the rest of the war council would both believe her and back her up, she knew others would be less easy to satisfy. Leliana and Josephine could handle the general public- people were already flocking to Haven in pilgrimages because of the rumors that Mariah was holy- but Cassandra feared there would be no handling of those like Roderick.

“And the Herald? Did you hear her voice?” Cullen asks, leaning forward over the war table. For the first time since entering the room, Leliana allows herself to respond.

“Oh, yes. I believe she said shit, you’re ugly, what the fuck are you? presumably to whomever or whatever was holding Divine Justinia. And then she said sorry, lady, but I ain’t running when you need help,” the spymaster answers, mouth curving around a poor imitation of Mariah’s accent.

“It is because of this that we are convinced of her innocence. There are still so many questions though. Not only do we not know about the Herald, but the Herald doesn’t seem to know of us. And if the Herald didn’t cause the explosion at the Conclave, if she is not responsible for all of this, then we do not know who is,” Cassandra chimes in.

“I suppose we will just have to ask the Herald herself,” Josephine says, a thoughtful look on her face. 

* * *

Mariah wakes up slow. The first thing she notices is that her mouth is cotton-dry. The second thing she notices is the headache, thrumming between her temples. It was not unusual- ever since Benny had put the bullets in her head, she’d dealt with the headaches. Sometimes they were worse than other times. This time was pretty damn bad, though. Bad enough that when she sat up, her stomach protested violently.

At least she hadn’t eaten anything lately. Of course, that might have been making it worse, too. She swings her legs over the side of the bed, noting how she hadn’t been under the blankets. She assumed she was still near Haven. She couldn’t quite remember if she’d closed the Breach or not. The mark on her hand flares, sickly green, and Mariah braces for pain that doesn’t come. Her palm tingles, like tiny electric shocks, but it was nothing like what it had been before.

The door bangs open as a woman enters the room, a small crate in her hands. Mariah takes in the pointed ears- she was going to have to ask about that at some point, if she stuck around long enough.

“I-I’m sorry! I didn’t know you were awake!” the woman says, dropping the crate and dropping to her knees. Well, okay, that was probably one of the strangest things that ever happened to her. Even when she’d done the impossible, even when people looked at her like she was more legend than woman, none of them had ever dropped to their knees to bow before her. She couldn’t say she liked it.

“Hey, whoa, it’s okay. I just woke up a few seconds ago. Where am I?” Mariah asks, giving the girl her friendliest smile.

“We’re in Haven, m’lady. I-I’m sure Lady Cassandra will want to know you’ve awoken. At once, she said! She’s waiting in the Chantry. I-I better go. She said, at once!” she answers, nearly tripping over herself as she flees the room. The door bangs shut behind her, and Mariah stares after her for a few moments, strangely bewildered.

When she finally hefts herself off the bed, her head swims, the throbbing behind her eyes intensifying. She gives it a moment to pass before she swings her pack onto the bed, digging in one of the pockets. The syringe she pulls out is not entirely clean. She grimaces down at it, wishing she hadn’t listened to Arcade. He talked about that sort of thing a lot- about the dangers of unclean needles and too many chems and dirty bandages. The way Mariah saw it, if it killed her, she was living on borrowed time anyway. There was a grave in Goodsprings with her name on it. Joshua had said it was by the grace of God that she survived. Mariah said that was bullshit.

Begrudgingly, she pulls a bottle of vodka out of her bag too. With Arcade’s lectures lingering in her head, she does what she can to sterilize the needle before she slides it into her arm. She’d never liked taking chems, not really, but sometimes it was the only thing that she could do. Sometimes a dose of psycho gave her what she needed to pull through some of the tougher fights. Sometimes a couple of tablets of buffout was what got her where she needed to be. And sometimes, med-x was all that made the headaches go away. It worked fast, too, and by the time Mariah had screwed the lid back on the vodka and slipped it back into her pack, the headache was gone.

She glances down at the clothes she’s in. They aren’t hers, and she’s never seen them before. Or anything like them, really. The shirt is made out of wool or something, all one color of beige, with silver buttons all up the front. She pops them open one by one, letting it fall to the ground. Whoever had dressed her hadn’t bothered with a bra. She realizes then that the door isn’t locked- anyone could walk through the door, same as the woman who’d just left. She stares at it for a moment, taking in the whorls in the grain of the wood, before she shrugs her shoulders and peels off the pants. If someone walks in, it’s not like she’s got anything to hide.

Nobody walks in, though. She digs through her bag until she can find a worn pair of jeans and the long sleeve shirt she’d stolen from Daniel. Her fingers hesitate over the duster Ulysses had left her, the faded two-headed bear staring up at her. She’d modified it, stitched on sleeves that matched well enough. The desert got cold at night. But the bear is a reminder that this isn’t home. That it probably isn’t her mess to clean up. It’s a reminder that things don’t go so well when she lets herself get tangled up in something bigger than her. It’s a reminder that she’s still got the platinum chip buried in the bottom of her pack, jangling around with the med-x and the psycho and the stimpaks.

When am I gonna stop stepping in shit? she wonders. She looks over to the window in the back of the cabin, where she can see snow piled on the ground, and she shrugs on the duster with a grumble. At least she can’t see the bear this way. She takes a few moments after that to accessorize- she fastens a holster to her thigh and slides one of her pistols in, and she snaps her Pip-Boy around her wrist. After a moment of consideration, she slides a switchblade into her sleeve and another into her boot.

With that, she squares her shoulders and steps out into the pale winter sunshine. Her boots crunch on the snow outside the cabin as she comes face to face with people lined up along the path.

At least they make it easy to find the Chantry. 

* * *

The sun is setting by the time Mariah finally leaves the Chantry. She stops long enough to grab her pack before she hikes out of Haven. In the Mojave, she’d gotten good at figuring out when people were following her, but she’d never thrown magic into the mix. Behind her, Haven swarms as the Inquisition is formally declared. It’s still buzzing when Mariah finally emerges onto one of the towering cliffs overlooking the town. She settles down, duster folded underneath her to keep the snow from soaking through her jeans.

She takes the transportalponder out of her bag, laying it across her lap. She pulls out a bottle of sarsaparilla next, and then the bottle of vodka from earlier. When she pops the lid in the sarsaparilla, she adds in a generous amount of the vodka, and shakes the bottle to mix it together. She takes her Pip-Boy off, digging through her bag until she finds an old holotape. When she slides it into the slot with a satisfying click, music plays from the old speaker.

_In the shadow of the valley_   
_I would like to settle down_

The orange-red of the sunset glints off the snow, but it’s not so harsh that Mariah can’t look at it. She’s not sure how long she sits like that, her gaze flicking between Haven and the horizon. It’s only broken by the sound of rustling branches and snow crunching underfoot. She doesn’t look up, but she slides her switchblade into her hand.

_I have wandered many places_   
_But they’re all the same to me_   
_Nowhere I’ve found_   
_To settle down_

“Are you not celebrating with the rest of Haven?” Solas asks. Mariah hesitates for a moment before she slides the switchblade back into her sleeve.

“Do you see this?” she asks, hefting up the transportalponder. Solas nods, brushing snow off the rock before he sits down.

“Yes,” he says, and the gleam in his eyes betrays his interest in it.

“All I have to do is pull the trigger and it’ll take me home,” she tells him. She takes a sip of the sarsaparilla- two hundred years, and somehow it managed to keep the fizz. Sometimes she forgot that the world was full of small wonders.

_A little bit further_   
_I’ll find my rest_   
_In the shadow of the valley_   
_That I love best_

“And why are you staying?” Solas asks, and Mariah doesn’t have to look at him to know the look on her face. She’d been asked that question before, enough that she’d lost count of it.

She doesn’t answer, just gestures at the Breach above them with the sarsaparilla bottle before she passes it to Solas. Out of the corner of her eye, she seems him grimace at it before he takes a drink. His nose wrinkles at the fizz. The song fades out, another takes its place.

“Don’t reckon there’s much for me back there. I’d rather do what good I could here before I went back to it,” she says, after a few moments. Solas passes the sarsaparilla back to her. She’d let him try a Nuka-Cola, but she doesn’t want to have to explain why he’d need to take a rad-x tablet first. Mostly what she wants is to go back in time.

The canyon wreckage where Ulysses sits looks out over all the Divide. It’d been there before. She’d made the trek more times than she could count before she’d destroyed the Divide. Sitting on the cliff like this, Solas next to her, made her remember sitting on the edge of that cliff, Eli pressed up against her. Sometimes they took sarsaparilla with them, sometimes Nuka-Cola. Sometimes, they made off with the good beer from the bar or a bottle of whiskey. Always, they had a pack of cigarettes to split between them.

“That’s a commendable goal,” Solas murmurs, drawing her back into the present. She looks at him with a thin smile, her fingers tracing over the cold metal of the transportalponder. She should look at it, try to take it apart and see if she could figure out why the damn thing had spit her out here instead of anywhere in the Mojave. Hell, she wouldn’t complain if it had spit her out somewhere else back home. The Capital Wasteland, maybe. She’d never been there, never seen the ruins of D.C.

“It ain’t got nothing to do with commendable. Or goals. Whatever the hell caused that Breach, I had a part in it. I’m just here to clean up my mess,” she says, bone-weary. It must show in her voice, because when she twists her to look at Solas, his face is twisted in a sympathetic smile.

“I have some questions, if I may,” he says, after a few moments of silence pass between them. The sun slips ever closer to the horizon.

“You can ask one, for now,” she tells him. His eyes gleam, a faint smile played out on his face.

“Very well. What’s that, on the back of your coat?” he asks. A ghost of a smile flits across Mariah’s face.

“It’s a two-headed bear,” she answers.

“What does it mean?” he prods, but Mariah only looks at him with a twinkle in her eyes.

“That’s a second question,” she tells him.

They stay on the cliff until they finish the sarsaparilla. Mariah drinks more than Solas does, but that’s okay. Sarsaparilla has always been her favorite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the lyrics aren't mine but it is my favorite song in new vegas and i thought it was fitting 
> 
> as always, comments and kudos are welcome! i do my best to respond to them. next chapter we're probably headed into the hinterlands.


	4. once in a blue moon

The journey to the Hinterlands begins the next day. Mariah packs fresh food for the next three days- anything beyond that and her MRE’s will see her through, and she doesn’t want to take a chance on the food rotting or molding or anything else to make it inedible. Cassandra, of course, disapproves. She insists Mariah will need more and assures her that when she runs out she won’t get to dip into Cassandra’s own provisions. Mariah sits across from her and eats a box of Fancy Lads Snack Cakes for breakfast to prove a point. The Seeker doesn’t look impressed, especially when Mariah offers her one.

She does, however, reach out to wipe the powdered sugar from Mariah’s nose with her thumb. 

* * *

The next hang-up comes when Mariah sees the horses. “We aren’t…walking?” she asks, hanging back. There are only two horses for the four of them, and both of them were obviously farm horses meant to pull plows. Mariah doesn’t trust the horses to get them out of Haven, much less all the way to the Crossroads.

“Of course not, Red. We want to get to the Hinterlands sometime before winter,” Varric says, laughing. Mariah shakes her head, looking at the horses. How much faster than her could they really go? Was it really such a bad thing that they’d died out after the bombs fell? She’d seen the mutated radstags and the brahmin with two heads and ugly, patchy fur. She shudders to think of what the beasts in front of her would look like after two hundred years of radiation.

Cassandra swings up onto the horse first. Really, it isn’t so large. Mariah is certain larger horses exist. She is also certain she still wants nothing to do with any horse, but Cassandra reaches down to help her up and Mariah realizes she can’t stall forever.

Besides, what sort of courier is afraid of horses? 

* * *

It turns out Mariah is afraid of horses. She’d met people who had fixed up old Pre-War cars and trucks and motorcycles and had even ridden on one of the latter herself once. It had been exhilarating and fun. Riding the horse was nothing like that. It plodded along at a ridiculously slow pace that Mariah knew she could match if not exceed (although she had to concede that Varric’s legs were too short to keep up with her and Cassandra too heavily armored) and more than that, it was alive.

Which meant it could feel, and probably think, and definitely smell her fear. Not that she would let any of her companions know she was anything other than fine with it, but she thinks the skittishness of the horse gave her away. She doubted she could blame it on Cassandra, who seemed the picture of poise behind her.

Mariah was sure Cassandra found the whole thing horrifically amusing, especially when Mariah slid off from the horse at the end of the day and found herself walking bow-legged. She was fairly vocal when she muttered to herself about how these horses were only good for eating- and she didn’t miss the horror on the faces of her companions when she did. 

* * *

Slowly, snow gives way to pine forest which gives way to real forests, full of pine and oak and birch and maple and more trees Mariah can’t identify because she never saw pictures in Pre-War books. The air is still cold, making her hunch into her duster, but she finds herself distantly grateful for the horse she’s on and the way Cassandra’s arms wrap around her to hold onto the reigns. It leaves her free to admire the scenery- she’d never seen so much green before. Varric fills his time complaining, but Mariah? She’s not got any room for complaints, not with tall trees stretching above her, branches linking together above her head.

The air here is so clean.

* * *

The picturesque scenery fades into the background as they reach the Crossroads. A day out, and they find dead, charred Templars and mages impaled on swords. It is Mariah who volunteers to build the pyre- thanks to the Legion she’d seen the lowest depths of human depravity. Signs of a battle, unfair as it seems to be, are easier to clean up when Mariah had cut men down from crosses and held them while they died.

She doesn’t stick around after that, though. She moves quiet and quick enough that she convinces her party to let her slip ahead to the Crossroads camp. She knows the least about the conflict- she swears it’ll be easier if she’s been briefed before they arrive around noon. Besides, she swears she’s not getting back on that horse even if Cassandra cuts her legs off. She’s fairly certain they concede just to get her out of their hair. 

* * *

Drawn weapons greet Mariah when she reaches the Crossroads camp. In hindsight, creeping up on the hidden camp of declared heretics wasn’t the smartest decision she’s made, but her palm sparks green and the soldiers are eager enough to put their blades away. She swears, loudly and insistently, that if they don’t stop calling her Herald she’s going to cut their tongues out. It keeps them from doing it to her face, at least.

Lace Harding greets her, leading her to a hastily assembled and empty tent. That’s one more thing Mariah isn’t used to- in the Mojave she slept on a bedroll underneath the wide open skies. Now, it is far too cold for that, and she’s quite certain she’d freeze. Still, Harding is nice enough to help her put her things together in the tent and spends long enough answering her questions that she feels guilty for keeping her up. She orders her to sleep in if she wants, and Harding leaves with a smile.

Sleep doesn’t come easy that night, but when she finally drifts off in the early hours of the morning, Mariah dreams. 

* * *

_She is back in Nipton. The air is heavy with smoke and the smell of burning flesh and the stench of death. She walks so slow it is as though she is wading through molasses, the rest of the world muted and dulled until her heartbeat echoes in her ears._

_The smoke grows thicker as she trudges around the rubble piled in the center of town. She doesn’t look too closely, too afraid of recognizing something, even though she’d never passed through Nipton before Benny’s trail led her there. She turns the corner, and that’s when things change._

_In the middle of the street, at the base of the steps leading to the town hall, stands a cross. Behind the cross, the Legion flag stands crimson against the pale blue sky, the golden bull burning itself into her eyes._

_Eli hangs on the cross, chest rising and falling with the shallowest breaths. She knows, if she were to take him from the cross, he would die in her arms._

_She does not notice the wolf that sits between the burned husks of the buildings._

_She raises her revolver, sunlight glinting_ off _the silver barrel of the gun. Her hand does not shake as she pulls the trigger. Her hand does not shake when blood splatters onto her face. Her hand does not shake as she slides the pistol into her holster._

_They only start to shake when she unties the ropes binding Eli to the cross. She catches him when she undoes the last knot, but he turns to ash in her arms. Two rings carved from seashells clatter to the ground. Mariah closes her eyes._

_When she opens them, Nipton has faded away, replaced by the tall and proud oaks in the Hinterlands. The wolf she never noticed has disappeared._

_She doesn’t wake until Cassandra, Varric, and Solas arrive at camp._

* * *

They eat lunch at the Inquisition’s camp. Mariah sits beside Cassandra to fill her in and, after a moment’s hesitation, offers her the Nuka-Cola she’d been drinking. She’s fairly certain it’s the first time it’s ever been cold since before the War, sitting outside on the cold ground for the duration of the cold night. In her opinion, it greatly improved the flavor of the soda.

The Seeker tips the bottle back, her nose wrinkling at the fizz as she lets out a cough. “What is this?” she asks, eyeing the bottle dubiously.

“Soda. Oh, uh, it’s irradiated. You should probably take a rad-x if you want anymore. I don’t know why Sarsaparilla is rad-free and Nukas aren’t, but I’ve got enough rad-away I could drink hundreds of them if I wanted. Should work on you, if you want more later,” Mariah tells her, offering her a rad-x tablet. The pill was chalky and terrible, but after a moment’s hesitation, Cassandra tosses the pill back in her mouth, chasing it with the Cola.

Mariah never recovers the Nuka-Cola, but somehow she finds she can’t complain. There’s plenty waiting for her back in the Mojave, after all. 

* * *

With the noon sky hanging over their head, they decide to wait one more night before venturing to the Crossroads proper. It is Mariah who makes this decision before pulling her three companions into their tent. She hadn’t been too pleased to discover she’d have to share that night- the last time she’d slept in the same space as someone it had been back before the Divide.

“So, what’s the plan when we get there?” Mariah asks, glancing between her companions. She was used to making the executive decisions, but her work with the NCR proved that she was more than capable of following orders. And she knew little of this world and the way it worked.

“We protect the refugees at the Crossroads,” Cassandra replies promptly. Mariah snorts, shaking her head.

“That’s not what I meant. I guess a better question is what I’m going to do when I get there,” she says, undoing her braid. Her hair had just started getting long again, hanging down to her chest. She missed the long hair she’d had before the Think Tank had shaved it all off and stolen her brain.

“I don’t believe I follow,” Solas says, pleasantly. She glances at him, eyes narrowed in thought. She’s pretty sure he understands more than what he lets on.

“My guns. Pretty sure the closest thing here is Bianca, and from what I’ve seen that’s a unique weapon. Ain’t got enough time in between now and tomorrow to get me fitted with real armor or for me to learn how to use a sword. As far as I know, I’m not one a mage either, and I’d like to keep it that way if we’re honest. I’ve got an idea, but I don’t know enough to know whether it would work,” she tells them, feeling blindly through her bag for the hairbrush she knows is in there somewhere. Finally, her hand closes around the handle.

“Well, Red, I think we’d need to know about your idea before we can offer solutions,” Varric says, a faint smile on his face.

“I have a laser pistol. A backup, because I’ve been caught without any ammo for my guns before. The energy cells are easier to recycle, and maybe it could be explained away as some weird mage thing,” she suggests, dragging the brush’s bristles through her hair.

“I would have to see it in action before I could advise,” Solas says. Mariah takes a moment to finish brushing her hair before she drags her bag into her lap, dropping the brush in and reaching into one of the inside pockets. She’d made sure the gun was unloaded before she put it up- she refused to be the woman who got shot by her own gun. She digs around in an outside pouch for a handful of ammo, carefully loading the cells into the gun. She’d stocked up on ammo for it, as well. Though she had the transportalponder to go back to the Sink whenever she needed more, she wasn’t too eager to demonstrate that to her companions. She’d just have to be a good shot.

“Guess we should go somewhere not here for me to demonstrate,” she says, rising from her bedroll. She swings her hair over her shoulder and leads the way outside, to the outskirts of the camp. Solas, Cassandra, and Varric trail behind her, fanning out behind her. She takes aim at a tree, firing off a couple of shots once she’s sure they’re watching.

“Sure looks like weird mage crap to me. Doesn’t look like any staff I’ve ever seen, so that may be hard to explain, but that? Looks like some weird spell,” Varric says.

“It does almost look like an arcane bolt, although it is red instead of the usual color of magical energy. Perhaps it could be explained as a result of your…device. If you take a page from Varric’s book and deflect any questions, perhaps it could work. It would certainly be less conspicuous than your other weapons,” Solas allows.

Mariah nods, flicking the safety on and holstering the pistol. She doesn’t like the gun near as much as her others- it handles differently, and the lasers leave burns behind instead of holes, but it’s better than nothing. And she could always go back to the Sink and fork up enough caps for a plasma pistol, too. Or a rifle. Maybe she could even trade some of the currency from this world.

“When we get back to Haven, you and I can work on another solution. If you could learn archery, perhaps, or swordsmanship, then we wouldn’t have to worry about it,” Cassandra says. Mariah nods her response, almost distractedly. There’s something about the idea of giving up her guns that she doesn’t like.

“Well, now that’s settled. Anyone else have any pressing concerns?” Varric asks. When none are forthcoming, all of them disperse, Mariah heading deeper into the trees. 

* * *

It is there she stays until Cassandra comes looking for her. Dusk has started to set in, darker under the trees than it ever was in the Mojave.

“You’ve been out here for quite some time,” the Seeker notes. Mariah looks up at her, her fingers running through the blades of grass.

“I suppose so,” she agrees as Cassandra takes a seat next to her on the rock.

“Might I ask why?” she asks. Her first answer is a shrug.

“In my world…there’s none of this. I suppose there wasn’t much of it to begin with there, since it is a desert, but overall? I’ve heard stories from people who’d run jobs to D.C. or to the Commonwealth. It’s the same everywhere. Everything is two hundred years dead. But this? It’s so alive. There’s grass that’s green and leaves on the trees and flowers and insects that aren’t bigger than my head. It’s…something that should be appreciated, is all,” she answers, slowly and thoughtfully. Eli would like to see it, she thinks, the old pain surfacing once more. She was thinking about him a lot, these days.

“I do not know much about it but…your world doesn’t sound very….welcoming,” Cassandra says, taking a moment to pick her words.

“It isn’t. But it’s home, as hostile as it is. Don’t know how much I miss it, though. Think I miss what I had there more than anything. Running water, electric lights, better medical care. That sort of thing,” she says.

“If anyone can make it a better place, it would be you. You’ve stayed in a world that you don’t belong in to save it and that is an admirable thing. But for now, we should get back to camp. We set out early in the morning,” she says, rising to her feet. After a moment, Mariah rises and follows in her footsteps.

At the edge of the camp, she turns to take one last look into the trees. She takes a deep breath, holding the clean air in her lungs, and wonders if it is a sign.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like this chapter was all over the place but w/e it's here i don't wanna skip too much. next chapter should be mariah learning a little more about the mage/templar conflict and getting incredibly pissed about it


End file.
